We Used to Follow Culture. Now We’re the Ones Dictating It.

Alvaro Anegon
18 hours ago
4 min read

For the longest time, a select few individuals and corporations have withheld the power to dictate culture. To better understand this, remember Meryl Streep's famous monologue in The Devil Wears Prada, when she lectures Anne Hathaway's character over her cerulean sweater 'it was selected for you by the people in this room'. This power dynamic is no longer accurate. These elites don't single-handedly make choices for the public anymore. Today, thanks to TikTok (and other platforms), the public drives culture.

Fashion is driven by fashion influencers; their taste shifts consumer habits, but most significantly, it is the individuals who select the influencers whom they trust, and thus, it is the people’s taste that drives culture. The fashion industry has been particularly reluctant to accept this, but as time passes, they have fallen in line. Whether it’s the Met Gala or a fashion show, influencers are becoming front and center, for better or for worse; they are taking up the space of celebrities and even models. Now, influencers who aren’t even creating fashion-related content are taking up space on the runway; one of the latest examples is Clavicular, the looksmaxxing influencer, most commonly known as ‘the guy who smashes his jaw with a hammer’, who opened the 424 show at Paris Fashion Week this summer.

Fashion is not the only cultural industry that is being altered by online discourse. In 2024, the girl group Katseye debuted; this was a product of the Korean Discography HYBE, which launched a competition-based reality TV show named Dream Academy, where 20 girls from all over the world competed for the six spots in the group. The international brand the lauched them, the loyal fanbase of K-pop, and the downpour of money to promote the debut of this group weren’t what made the mainstream aware of them. It was Sydney Sweeney. When American Eagle dropped the ad campaign in which the actress appears to wink at the alt-right by describing her jeans (phonetically similar to ‘genes’) as great, people on the internet could not help but compare this to Katseye’s Gap ad. While Gap appeared as a champion of diversity by hiring a multicultural girl group, American Eagle was accused of being in bed with the far-right. The internet could not help but launch this woman as opposing forces, and this (very well-performed ad) is the primary reason most people got to know Katseye. HYBE could not have fabricated these circumstances, regardless of their money, even if they had been clever enough to come up with this idea themselves. It was the desire of some Internet users to topple Sweeney’s ad that caused the virality of Katseye’s ad, lifting Katseye from being another K-pop group you didn’t care about to the mainstream.

There used to be a time when the greatest cultural phenomena seemed unpredictable. Nobody could have predicted Barbenheimmer. The truth is that behind that phenomenon, there were a few accounts that made memes on social media, which turned a coincidence (which at first glance appeared as an inconvenience for both parties) into a cultural event. What the film industry did not understand at the time is that an individual's ability to comprehend internet culture and to shape it is a talent, an employable talent.

When Heated Rivalry was pitched to HBO, they did not see the vision behind it. Regardless, people online saw the vision. The TikTok edits turned a show from a Canadian streaming platform that you've never heard of into a massive commercial success. Notably, HBO has taken note of this. On New Year's Eve, the content creator @uhbucky received a text from HBO. She got hired after she reached 3.5 million views on a Heated Rivalry TikTok edit. HBO can't take back its inability to grasp the project's potential, but it can adapt to this new era, where even big media companies can be outshone by small projects backed by content creators.

The best films at the box office as I write this essay are Obsession and Backrooms, both of which are horror films, and they also share the fact that their creators started on YouTube. The era of a select group of individuals choosing what is popular and what isn't is over; young people online are driving cultural trends instead of chasing them. Some are starting to notice and are smart enough to take action. The director of Leviticus (another horror film) has recently made available (before the release of the film) scenes from the movie for people to 'make edits, reels, fancams, compilations or unhinged little masterpieces... have fun with it'. Not only is it a great way to facilitate hype for the project, but it also happens to be free labour.

The path we are in is clear; the big corporations that dominate cultural industries are losing their grasp on power. In a world where we are all interconnected, where news travels far and fast, and indie film can rise to the top of the box office, a show about a gay romance between hockey players can become one of the highest-rated shows of all time; the norms of what is possible are shifting. If there is one thing I would like you to take away after reading this, it is that great things are likely coming our way.